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A Step-by-Step Guide to Defining Services Catalog...A Step-by-Step Guide to Defining Your Cloud...
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Defining Your Cloud Services Catalog
Table of Contents
Chapter 1Defining the Services Catalog
Chapter 2Building a Services Catalog
Chapter 3Choosing the Right Solution for Your Business
Chapter 4Declaring Success
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Introduction
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Enterprises looking to build cloud services
catalogs soon learn that the path to
success is complex. It’s complex both
because of the diversity of available services,
as well as how enterprises interact with
those services. Yet, the good news is that
the technology you deploy in support of
this initiative will strip complexity from the
development process. The catalog itself
shields users and administrators from
dealing with the underlying management
– including automation – of cloud services.
Cloud services catalogs are a centralized
resource to both discover and leverage
private or public cloud services. An outgrowth
of service registries and repositories from
the days of SOA (Service-Oriented
Architecture), this new and improved
technology provides a single gateway for
service access for applications and end
users. The listed services typically include
application functionality or data for use
either by end users or in applications. As
a result, enterprises are able to reuse these
cloud services across applications, and
they may exist on any number of platforms
including private and public clouds.
Think of a services catalog as akin to iTunesTM,
or other online music and video stores,
rather than as a typical catalog. Just as we
download the music we need, on-demand,
service catalogs allow you to discover and
access cloud services, such as storage,
compute, and business services, which
can be self- or auto-provisioned. Just like
iTunes tracks your music downloads, cloud
services catalogs track your service usage.
Perhaps even applying rules to your use of
Introduction
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services, such as who or what can leverage
services, and for what purpose.
Enterprises that lack cloud services catalogs
are missing out on the advantages of
centralized control, centralized discovery,
and centralized access; and these services
become distributed and unmanageable
pretty quickly. Not surprisingly, effective
governance becomes the single most
important reason that cloud service catalogs
exist for enterprises.
Beyond service catalogs, enterprises that
also leverage best-of-breed automation and
operations tools to insure success after initial
implementation of service catalogs are far
more likely to meet their cloud business
objectives. However, this takes a certain
amount of understanding as to the
approach, as well as knowledge of the
available technology.
In this eBook, we’ll remove the mystery out
of how to define a cloud services catalog,
providing you with a step-by-step guide
to build the catalog itself. This effort often
marks a departure for IT, and typically there
are no existing models to follow. However,
we’ll move you through the processes to
understand the existing service assets, and
leverage best-of-breed operations and
automation technology. Finally, we’ll show
you how all of this information ties together
into a larger plan to leverage cloud
computing; a plan that will provide more
efficiencies and agility.
Introduction
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Public Cloud
Corporate IT
Public Cloud Private Cloud
Line-of-Business
Private Cloud
Partners
Cloud services catalogs provide a single
point of discovery and access for IT, applications,
line-of-business users, and partners.
Cloud Services Catalog
Introduction
Defining the Cloud Services Catalog: Challenges and Opportunities
Chapter 1
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The use of cloud services provides enterprises
with key advantages such as these:
First, enterprises have the ability to
leverage services from anywhere, as
required by the architecture in support
of the business. For example, there’s
the ability to leverage a credit check
service hosted on a cloud-based platform,
from any systems within the architecture,
on-premise or cloud-based. An application
at the services level may be location
and platform independent except when
data security, SLA’s or other requirements
legislate where the service is hosted.
Second, there’s the ability to leverage
virtualization, or address core applications
as logical instances that may run on any
number of physical servers, providing
better resource utilization and scalability.
In essence, you are talking to the
applications through the services interface.
The location where the instance actually
runs is transparent to you.
Finally, there’s the ability to mix and
match services for use within composite
applications or processes. This approach
underscores the agility of cloud computing
architecture. Not only can you create
application processes quickly to solve
business problems, but you can also
recreate them as needed, and thus provide
the core value of agility. The use of cloud
computing provides even more value since
we do this using more cost-effective
computing platforms, public or private.
The cloud services catalog is the key to
automated provisioning and deployment
because it provides a single point of
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reference for the cloud services. The
services catalog defines, in detail, all
services—public and private—available
to business users or developers.
The services catalog must be kept
scrupulously up to date so that users
always have a clear picture of the
available services and resources. What’s
more, the services under management
need to be related directly to the needs
of the business.
The services catalog of today differs
from services catalogs found in the
initial days of SOA (Service-Oriented
Architecture) in that the underlying
technology details are usually not
provided to the users. The rationale
is that keeping the implementation
details behind the catalog, as it were,
provides IT with the maximum flexibility
to obtain resources from either private
or public clouds.
This structure supports the notion of
multi-cloud deployments that seem to
be the current direction in the industry,
and provides the ability to monitor the
use and cost of the services, which
allows IT to better manage SLAs for
the entire enterprise.
Services Catalogs and Cloud Operations
Cloud operations refer to those operations
that can proactively avoid performance
issues and gain deep insights into the
health, risk and efficiency of virtual and
physical cloud infrastructure, as well as
operating systems and applications. This
is done with infrastructure that can provide
performance data that’s abstracted to key
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metrics. Analysis of the key metrics allow
those who monitor cloud services offered
in the services catalog to proactively
make changes in the operational profile
to support the use of the services.
Cloud operations also refers to the ability
to manage capacity and cost metering of
cloud services, and thus track usage, true
costs, and the value of leveraging each
service. Another key function is the ability
to logically group resources so they can
be managed by services, or by groups of
services. Finally, cloud operations provide
the ability to manage services through the
use of policies, which can be set to limit
or manage access to cloud services in the
catalog, or set alerts for administrators
to be notified if services use goes out of
pre-set limits.
Services Catalogs and Cloud Automation
Creating a scalable, yet cost effective,
cloud management program requires
a closely-knit mix of strategy, technology
and tactics. What’s the leading priority?
Automation. Enterprises should consider
the use of key service governance and
cloud automation technology that can
provide orchestration workflows to turn
groups of services into a business solution.
Cloud automation also provides the ability
to create policies and procedures to
automate the access and use of services
by both developers and end users, and
thus make the use of the services catalog
more productive and accessible.
Cloud automation is all about defining
mechanisms that automate the use of
cloud services, including the ability to
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automatically correct issues with cloud
services, such the operational health of
the service, including performance and
working through changes within the
infrastructure. This can be accomplished
using workflow triggers that allow
administrators to create alerts, and trigger
automated procedures that are tied to
those alerts.
Cloud automation is tightly coupled
with security as well, including automating
best practices, which keeps the service
secure, while automated workflows and
procedures can implement compliance
requirements. Resource management
using provisioning capabilities also falls
under the cloud automation umbrella,
controlling which resources (including
cloud services in the catalog) are
provisioned and for what purpose. This
can be extended to enforce policies and
procedures, which removes the end users
or developers from the role of enforcer.
Instead, automated tools manage the use
of services and resources.
Creating a Plan-of-Attack
Enterprise IT should create a well-defined
and resourced plan to both implement the
services catalog, and to place automated
operational, governance, security, and
management facilities around the use of
the services. This plan will provide the
jumping off point for the movement to
a services catalog, which will be defined
stepwise in the next section.
Chapter 1
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Building a Services Catalog
Chapter 2
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While many enterprises may opt to not
use these steps and instead iterate
through the definition and construction
of a services catalog, the best path is to
work through your understanding and
issues around cloud services in a stepwise
manner. This will allow you to properly
build the services catalog, and make sure
you do not miss major steps that could
result in a sub-optimal cloud services catalog.
It’s also important to note is that this
process is lead by requirements, and
thus those in IT building services catalogs
need to collaborate with existing subject
matter experts in the various departments.
For example, making sure to include
those who are doing billing in defining
We recommend that enterprises follow an eight-step process to build a services catalog.
The steps include:
Step 1: Understand Existing Services Assets
Step 2: Understand Cloud Services Assets
Step 3: Identify Required Types of Automation
Step 4: Define Use of Automation
Step 5: Establish Operations Planning
Step 6: Identify Candidate Services
Step 7: Deploy Initial Services Catalog
Step 8: Test and Deploy
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and exposing cloud services that provide
accounts receivable types of functions.
Step 1: Understand Existing
Services Assets
In this step, enterprise IT must list and
categorize existing services within
enterprise systems. These are typically
easy to find since many enterprise systems
already expose APIs, which are services.
Also, include any data services, or even
legacy systems services, that are critical
to the enterprise business. We’ll finalize
this in steps 6 and 7, as well as in the next
step. Here, it’s just a basic understanding.
Step 2: Understand Cloud
Services Assets
As in step 1, here you perform the same
activities for cloud-based services. This
means compiling an inventory of services
within private and public cloud resources,
including APIs/services that manage
storage, compute, resource provisioning,
and business services. Again, we’ll finalize
this list in steps 6 and 7.
Step 3: Identify Required Types
of Automation
Once we have an understanding and
inventory of services found within
existing enterprise systems, newer private
and public clouds, or other services that
should be identified and listed in the
catalog, it’s time to understand how the
use of these services can be automated.
The automation is a part of core
governance systems that can be put in
place to enforce pre-defined policies,
or other procedures, in how the services
should be provisioned, managed, and
utilized, by end users or developers.
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There are two paths to consider here; first
is resource governance, and the second is
service governance.
Resource governance deals with collections
of services, or resources, that exist within
major entities, and is also known as macro
governance. For instance, the ability to
allocate groups of storage services that exist
in a private cloud environment would be
an example of resource governance. Newer
cloud management platforms provide resource
governance capabilities, including the ability
to provision, manage, and de-provision any
number of IT assets out of public or private
clouds, or traditional systems.
Service governance is the same as resource
governance, but at a more fine-grained
level, and is also known as micro governance.
Instead of dealing with larger collections of
services, such as resources, we’re dealing
with the individual services themselves.
An example would be the service to place
an object onto a cloud-based storage
server, or a service that provides the ability
to check a stock quote.
Step 4: Define Use of Automation
As covered above, operation of the services
catalog must take the use of automation
into consideration. This is the step where
you plan to automate the use of cloud services,
including binding them into workflows or
applications. The use of automation also covers
the application of polices that define access
to services, as well as track dependencies.
Step 5: Establish Operations Planning
Operations planning should take the use
of services and the services catalog into
consideration. This means understanding
and dealing with performance and access
management issues, as well as having the
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ability to manage resources using provisioning
capabilities to control which resources,
including cloud services in the catalog, are
provisioned and for what purpose.
Step 6: Identity Candidate Services
The next step is the process to identify
candidate services. The candidate services
are all services identified within the problem
domain (a specific area of focus in an
enterprise, such as HR systems, inventory,
etc.) that have the potential of becoming
services. We do this to make sure we identify
the right services by identifying and sorting
through all potential services, cloud or not
cloud. This deliverable is nothing more than
a listing of services, and what each does.
Step 7: Deploy Initial Services Catalog
Creating the initial services catalog means
that we list of all the relevant services from
the candidate services list and thus selected
as services for our problem domain. Moreover,
they are decomposed and ordered so all
services that are dependent upon other
services are understood, from the highest
level to the lowest. Again, these services
can be private or public cloud, or services
found in traditional systems.
Step 8: Test and Deploy
In this step we test the services catalog,
as well as automation and operations,
including the invocation of services and
their ability to provide the expected
behavior and information. We also test
the services catalog’s ability to provide
the right level of performance, utilization
of resources, and its ability to support
applied governance and operations
polices using the automation capabilities
of the catalog.
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Choosing the Right Solution for Your Business
Chapter 3
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There are three core issues to consider when
selecting a cloud services catalog solution:
Cloud automation, cloud operations, and
cloud business.
Cloud automation is core to leveraging
a cloud services catalog. The number of
services is typically significant, and thus the
ability to automate the management, use, and
protection of the cloud services is critical. This
is typically policy-driven. The ability to spot
and resolve problems should be automated,
such as cloud services leveraged by the wrong
consumer or wrong services, or the ability to
understand any cloud service dependencies.
Cloud operations should provide enterprise
IT with the ability to proactively avoid
performance and stability issues by gaining
deep insights into the health, risk, and
efficiency of the enterprise’s cloud services.
Cloud operations, like cloud automation,
should include the ability to create polices
and alerts that automate the operations of
the cloud services. This allows you to spot
issues before they affect applications or
complete systems.
Finally, cloud business refers to the ability
to monitor the cost of cloud services, in
terms of cost metering and cost accounting.
Cloud business determines who consumes
the cloud services, and arranges charge-back
and show-back monitoring, such as
allocating costs among the organizations that
leverage the cloud services, based upon use.
Also included in this concept is the ability to
provide analytics into past and future costs
of operating the cloud services, including
tracking the cost of these services from the
resources (such as storage and compute) to
the ultimate consumer.
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Declaring SuccessChapter 4
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As you move toward construction of a
cloud services catalog, you need to define
the value that this concept and its supporting
technology bring to the organization. You
do this by defining the metrics for success,
including service reuse, enhanced business
agility, and quicker time-to-market. While
these are all valuable concepts, the amount
of value that they bring depends upon the
characteristics of your organization. The
results of the step process outlined above will
tell you how much value the cloud services
catalog actually brings to your business.
The use of cloud services is no longer
optional for your business; it has become
a fundamental way to approach the
creation and deployment of automated
business solutions. The use of cloud
services allows us to take an assembly
approach to building applications, rather
than always building these applications
from scratch. This provides both speed
and agility to the business, and thus
provides the value and ROI.
What’s next? Follow the eight steps for
the creation and management of a cloud
services catalog. A cloud services catalog
will enable your enterprise customers to act
faster than ever before.
Chapter 4
To learn more about Service Catalog solutions go to:
vRealize Automation
“Not All Service Catalogs are Created Equal” Article
Cloud Management & Automation Highlights from 451 Research
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